1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cable location continuously determining apparatus, a cable location continuously determining method, and a cable location continuously determining program which determine the location of a cable buried in the ground.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-330245 filed Sep. 22, 2003, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
When performing construction work to repair a cable which has already been buried or when performing construction work to bury a new cable, it is necessary to determine the location at which an existing cable is buried in order to prevent the existing cable from being damaged. Thus, in the past, various research relating to techniques of determining the location of a cable have been made, and their outcomes have been reported.
For example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2001-356177, a weak AC (alternating current) magnetic field originating from a cable buried in the ground is measured from the surface of the earth, while a cable location determining apparatus which is provided with two magnetic sensors whose positions in a horizontal plane are the same and whose heights are different from each other is moved so that the cable location determining apparatus traverses the cable. Based on the measurement results, distances from measurement positions to the location of the cable are calculated. It is then determined that the cable is buried below the measurement position for which the calculated distance is the shortest among the calculated distances for a plurality of measurement positions.
However, the above-described cable location determining apparatus determines the location at which a cable is buried while the cable location determining apparatus is moved in the direction along which the cable location determining apparatus traverses the cable. Therefore, a problem arises in that only the discrete locations of the cable can be obtained.